How Heads of HR Should Spot the Future Leaders in Your Business

HR is typically responsible for identifying the future leaders of an organization through succession planning sessions, talent development programs and yes being in the business daily to observe. If you where to look at areas to determine your future leaders, what would you use to do this, absent any formal programs? Here is what I would look at in addition to your programs:

• individuals who consistently deliver ambitious results for the company
• individuals who consistently demonstrate the ability to grow, adapt, and be more flexible than their other top performing peers
• individuals who ask for opportunity and expand their capacity of operation and influence
• individuals who take things to the next level (ie: imagination, creativity, product futures etc)
• individuals who have strong powers of observation, judgement, reactions that are spot on, and EQ
• individuals who are clear thinkers and have a point-of-view that may be counter to the trend, and finally
• individuals who ask questions that are insightful that get the thought process into a creative frenzy.

The bigger question is are you astute enough and involved enough in your organization to see these features in your talent pool? If you need a book to help you read Ram Charan's book Know-How.